ABSTRACT
Backed by the names of the veteran Marxists, the Iskra immediately became the fanfare of revolutionary socialism, the rallying point of the radicals. Russian workers, insufficiently acquainted with Marx and his teachings, had to believe that this pronouncement was Marxist-socialist, and the intellectuals, enamoured with the idea of suddenly changing from outcasts to leaders of innumerable masses of workers, did not feel called upon to analyze the statement and expose its sophistry. Nobody seems to have asked who gave Lenin the authority to proclaim himself and his group of intellectuals as the supreme command of social-democracy. Lenin insisted that the remaining delegates representing twenty-three votes constituted the majority of the congress and their decisions were accordingly valid. Now there were two Social-democratic Parties in Russia, with different Central Committees, with different periodicals, each claiming to be the central organ, with different conditions of membership and with different aims.
